“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m pretty sure,” Sarah said.
“What’s that mean? — you’re pretty sure.”
She shrugged. “He calls me a little bitch-whore and tells me I’m getting what I deserve. I mean he’s intense. In my opinion, he’s the kind of guy who could kill someone in a heartbeat, so long as he could justify it in his own mind. Somehow he justifies what he does to me. He doesn’t even see me as a real human being.”
“You’re just his little bitch-whore.”
“Exactly.”
“What about the name Rachel Ringer? Did he ever mention that name to you?”
Sarah wrinkled her forehead, going deep.
“The name seems familiar for some reason, but I can’t place the context.”
“She was one of the four women found dead at the railroad spur.”
Sarah looked confused.
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“Her name’s been in the news,” Aspen added.
“I don’t watch the news.”
When they got back to the trailer park, they hugged and Aspen thanked the woman for talking. “And like I said, this is just between you and me. I understand money problems.” Sarah looked doubtful, so Aspen added, “See that Honda over there? That’s mine.”
The woman grinned.
“I’m glad you said that. Now I feel better.”
The meeting took longer than Aspen had planned. By the time she arrived back at the law firm, her entire lunch hour was gone and then some.
Christina spotted her almost immediately, slipped into her office, and closed the door.
“Well?” she asked.
“I’ll give you the details later,” Aspen said. “But it’s worse than I thought. We need to get into Bennett’s office and have a look around.”
She sensed that Christina was going to say no, it was too risky. But instead she said, “Okay.”
“Tonight,” Aspen added.
“Fine.”
“Cruella’s too.”
Christina looked confused.
“But if Bennett killed Rachel, how could Jacqueline Moore possibly be involved?”
Aspen shrugged.
“I don’t know. All we know for sure is that she is. Maybe she found out about it and is helping him cover it up. Or maybe she put him up to it in the first place. Remember, she and Rachel had a personality conflict. All I know for sure at this point is that we need to find out.”
“Maybe we should just go to the police and tell them what we have,” Christina said.
“No,” Aspen said. “They don’t have the kind of access we do. For better or worse, this is on our shoulders. Or my shoulders, at least.”
“Our shoulders,” Christina said.
Aspen studied her.
“Maybe it’s time for you to back out,” she said. “You’ve been here a while and actually have something to lose.”
Christina shook her head.
“I need to know where I’m working,” she said. “And whether I want to bother building my career here.”
Aspen nodded.
“Okay. Tonight, then.”
51
DAY NINE-SEPTEMBER 13
TUESDAY MORNING
Still 95 percent asleep, Draven twisted from his left side to his right, sending a stiff but short ripple through the mattress. When the ripple didn’t ricochet back he opened his eyes, just a slit. He was in the bed at the farmhouse and recalled drinking too much JD last night and screwing Gretchen like a rock star before passing out. He’d woken up three or four times during the night to piss, and each time Gretchen had been lying next to him, motionless and breathing deep and heavy.
But now she wasn’t.
Then he heard noises from the kitchen and remembered that she wanted to get up early and make him pancakes for breakfast.
He rolled onto his back and put his hands under his head.
Dawn had broken, but not by much.
Gretchen sang.
Too low and off-key for him to figure out the song.
“What are you singing?” he shouted.
She walked in wearing only a T-shirt, straddled him and pinned his arms above his head.
She kissed him.
“Are you hungry?”
“Yeah. What were you singing?”
“La Isle Bonita.”
“Never heard of it. Sing it to me.”
She pinned his arms tighter. “No. I’m too embarrassed.”
“I’m not going to let you go until you do,” he said.
She moved her weight higher on his chest.
“Not let me go? I’m the one who has you, in case you haven’t noticed.”
He flipped her, then straddled her and pinned her arms over her head.
“Now who has who?”
“That’s not the question,” she said.
“Oh?”
“The question is who’s going to turn the pancakes over before they burn.”
“Tricky,” he said. “Very tricky.”
He brought her hands together, clamped them in his left hand, and then reached down with his right and tickled her armpits until she went nuts and begged for mercy. Then he released her and headed for the shower.
Shit!
He suddenly remembered Mia Avila, outside in the Granada, under a blanket on the floor of the back seat, drugged and chained to the seat brackets. He couldn’t leave her at the cabin last night, not with the client coming in to do Chase.
He threw on a pair of jeans and stepped out to check on her.
There she was.
Exactly as he’d left her last night.
“Good girl,” he said, and then headed back inside for a shower.
Gretchen slapped his ass as he walked by. “I’m the dessert,” she said. “In case you’re interested.”
“Oh, I’m interested all right.”
He got the water as hot as he could and then stepped inside and lathered up. Today would be busy. He’d have to clean the cabin and dispose of the stripper’s body after the client left, for starters. He also needed to kill Mia Avila sometime today and get rid of her remains.
When he got out of the shower, the farmhouse smelled like pan-cakes-buttery, delicious pancakes. He dressed in the bedroom and shouted into the kitchen, “God, that smells good. I’m starved.”
No response.
“Gretchen? You there?”
Nothing.
Weird.
He walked into the kitchen.
She wasn’t there.
“Gretchen?”
Silence.
He stepped out the front door and couldn’t believe his eyes. Gretchen stood next to the Granada, with the door open, looking into the back seat.
At Mia Avila.
She turned and stared as he walked toward her.
Then she ran.
52
DAY NINE-SEPTEMBER 13
TUESDAY MORNING
Teffinger met with Sydney late Tuesday morning. She had run down all the phone calls that Brad Ripley made on March 15th. In fact, she had personally called every number and talked to the person Ripley had talked to. She asked them what they talked about and took careful notes.
Everything was legit and unremarkable.
Only one call remained unexplained.
It came to Ripley’s cell from a payphone on the south side of Denver and lasted four minutes. There was no way to track it. Even if it turned out to be within view of a security camera, the tape would have long been recycled at this point.
“Drive out there and check it anyway,” Teffinger said. “You never know.”
She frowned.
“That seems thin,” she said.
Teffinger cocked his head and asked, “When did that call come in?”
She checked her notes.
“12:49.”
“Ripley used two different colored pens in his day planner that day,” he said. “Some of the stuff happened in the morning. That was in black ink. More stuff happened in the afternoon, also in black ink. The red ink comes in the middle of the day, the same time of day as the call from the payphone. So run that call to ground, and then to underground if you have to. Whoever’s on the other end of the line is our connection.”
She said, “I’ll check his credit card statement from that day too, to see if he went to lunch anywhere and happened to end up paying, just in case the communication was in person.”